You Should Know This

Before you embark on a trip around the world -- or a trip anywhere outside of North America, actually -- you should really learn to drive with a manual transmission. Automatic cars can be hard to find in a lot of places; they'll also cost you more to rent. Let me tell you a story.

Before we left in 2007 BG had driven standard exactly twice. He assured me he knew what he was doing and could also show me. (I had shifted from first to second, once, in my ex-boyfriend's parents' pickup truck.) On our first day off from SANCCOB in Cape Town, we decided to rent a car and drive down to Cape Point. We chose a manual transmission to save money.

We were living in a guest house situated in the suburbs, so the neighbourhood was quiet and peaceful, a perfect place to brush up on driving skills. The first problem was that the car rental company, which normally delivered the cars, had us come to the office in downtown Cape Town instead. "Are you SURE you can do this?" I asked BG again. "Yes" was what I heard over and over.

Once the car was in our hands, BG got in the driver's seat. He adjusted the mirrors and seat meticulously. He shifted into first and we cruised slowly (downhill) down the street to a stop sign; we turned right onto Long Street (perhaps THE busiest street in downtown Cape Town) and came to a stop at a red light. At rush hour.

So apparently there was a 0.005% incline at this light, because at this point we found ourselves in a difficult situation. Every single time BG tried to get the car in motion again it stalled. Then it would roll backwards and he would slam his foot on the brake. The light changed three times. I sat completely paralyzed and unable to help, as he grew more and more flustered. People behind us were very angry. A kind taxi driver on a break approached us and offered to help. BG declined at first, but after three more stalled attempts sheepishly called him over. "I was wondering if you could help me... (playing it cool, not admitting he has no effing clue what he's doing)... I'm not used to this rental car and I can't seem to find first gear." Mr. Nice Taxi Driver Man tried to direct from his place on the street, but it didn't help. People were honking and yelling. Finally BG said, "You know what, maybe you can just drive us back to the rental place and we'll get an automatic." "No, no," the driver insisted, "I can show you how to drive this car. It will take 5 minutes. Very easy." So he got in the driver's seat and whipped around the corner to a quiet parking lot. "Here, get in and drive, I will show you how and then you will be fine." BG got into the driver's seat. I took a seat on the lawn with my book and waited.

It all happened so quickly. BG started the car and shifted into reverse. Then he let out the clutch and gunned the engine hard... and hit the tree that was right behind him. There was a loud crash followed by an awful silence. Then the instructor said, "Shit. These trees are not supposed to be here anyway, in these parking lots." BG said, "I think you'd better drive us back to the rental place." This time, he agreed.

In the end, we actually had to learn to drive standard because the truck we had hired to drive through Southern Africa was standard. We ended up taking lessons -- each of us spent two hours in the car with a cute medical student/driving instructor named Hannes, and he taught us how to do it all. It wasn't hard, actually, and grew to be an almost enjoyable experience. By the time we had to drive the truck, we were pros.

If you could learn how to do this before you leave, it would be good. However, I'm glad that we didn't, because it's given me my favourite story of all time -- the one where BG backs into a tree. Ah, sweet vengeance.

You Know You're in Africa When

• The taxi runs out of fuel two blocks from your final destination, and it's not a big deal. (At least it wasn't the highway.)
  
• The menu lists ostrich filet, springbok, and kudu steaks with chips.
• The band plays 'Stand by Me', accompanied, fabulously, only by tribal drums.
• It takes two months to receive confirmation of a hotel booking, and you're kind of okay with that.
• Food described as spicy is actually slightly too spicy.
• Planning a trip requires asking questions like, 'Is the ferry for the river border crossing actually big enough for a car?'
• The country you're visiting has eleven official languages.
  
• And the taxi driver can speak six of them.
• People finally know what I'm talking about when I mention Mauritius.
• The mosquitoes are positively nuclear. (Not nucular.)
• People talk about driving over 340m high sand dunes without flinching.
• Campers gripe about the pea-sized sand fleas, adders, and scorpions like we talk about black flies. It's the crocodiles and hippos you have to really worry about!
  
• Everything can be braiied (barbequed.) Everything.
• People own SUVs not for status, but for survival. Land Rovers aren't pretentious, they're practical!
• Chocolate bars have the consistency of candles.
• You're a 12-hour flight from Europe, but in the same time zone as Germany.
• Local wine is divine, and the fruit juice is magical.
• You can wake up and look out to the ocean, and then look the other way to Table Mountain.
• People eat corn porridge for breakfast.
• Tofu is exotic.
• All of the east-flowing rivers in the continent are infested with little tiny snails that become parasitic worms that burrow into your skin and invade your bloodstream. Don't swim in them.
• The people are beautiful, the beaches are to die for, and the air vibrates with exotic culture and energy.
• History is horrific but there's always hope.
  

This is Africa

We’re a week into our Southern Africa 4x4 sojourn, and have spent a quiet day in the coastal Namibian “city” of Swakopmund recharging and relaxing. Let’s recap what’s happened so far:

Day 1: Alan and Catherine arrive in Cape Town. We are late to pick them up, but our defence is that they arrived at the airport at 5:00 am. From there we drive a bit up to Chapman’s Peak and have “THE BEST FISH AND CHIPS IN CAPE TOWN.”

Day 2: We take our guests to see our friends the penguins at SANCCOB and buy supplies for our upcoming trip. The truck we have rented arrives, and is missing the following things:

• Maps, spare key,and GPS as promised
• A working tire jack
• A usable spare tire release rod
• Four functional tires (the two in front are bubbling off of the rims, and one of the rear tires is a road tire. On an off-road vehicle.)
• A second spare tire (***this is important later.***)
• A functioning interior cabin light
• Cattle/bull bars on the front of the truck
• Extra tank for fresh drinking water
• A functioning front passenger seat belt. Luckily, the front seat slides forward and backwards, so you can adjust your seat to fit the seat belt, which does not move.
• A full tank of diesel
• A functional brake light/tail light

Day 3: We depart after running around Cape Town to pick up the new tires, GPS, and diesel which were thoughtfully left out. We spend the night alone in Garies and wonder why the night in Africa is so freaking cold.

Day 4: Enter Richtersveld National Park in northern South Africa and enjoy a terrifying 4x4 route complete with sand, big rocks, and 45 degree inclines. At our campsite, a friendly neighbour offers us a bottle of wine, two bottles of drinking water, and some firewood. We like South Africans.

Day 5: Drive to the Orange River, still in Richtersveld. It takes us five hours to drive 40 km to our campsite, which is supposedly remote and rustic, but is crawling with tourists. We choose a shaded spot next to the river, and a local family promptly drives up and sets up their tent and diesel generator next to us. We wait until they finish setting up, and then drive two sites over. We like South Africans less. Discover that the compressor for the tires doesn’t work properly and that the cigarette charger has been blown (and no, it wasn’t the fuses.)

Day 6: Cross the border into Namibia. The border is the Orange River, and we are taken across on a small pontoon. It’s the quickest border crossing I’ve ever encountered. We’re in Namibia!

Day 7: Head to Fish River Canyon and get a flat tire as soon as we pull into the campsite parking lot. Have a nice dinner.

Day 8: Wake up early to see the sunrise over the knee-buckling grandeur of Fish River Canyon. Realize it’s overcast, sleep a bit more. Also realize that the transmission in our car is dead after visiting three mechanics in the desert of Namibia. The 4x4 part of our 4x4 doesn’t work, and we have only a 4x2, which puts a serious dent in our plans.

Day 9: Drive to Sesreim, home of Sossusvlei and some of the biggest sand dunes in Africa. Visit a sand dune for sunset after waiting three hours in the hot desert for the truck company to call us back. Nearly have a heart attack trying to climb the dune, since it’s the only exercise we’ve had in a week.

Day 10: Wake up ridiculously early to see the sunrise over Sossusvlei. We can’t drive there ourselves, since our 4x4 is now a 4x2. Wait for a shuttle to take us to the dunes for sunrise, which never shows. Instead, we watch the sun rise over the outhouses in the Namibian Desert, five kilometres from Sossusvlei. The shuttle shows up 40 minutes after sunrise, and we get on it. Temporary replacement arrives from truck rental company, and is much smaller than our original truck. Has no jumper cables or proper stove, but two dining tables. We shove everything into it and move on.

Day 11: Enter the Namib-Nakluft Park for more 4x4ing, since we now have a 4x4. We camp for the night at a lovely site patrolled by gigantic baboons.

Day 12: Fail to complete 4x4 trail as we’d hoped, since the new truck lacks the suspension and power to go over the rocks. Leave the park and stop for lunch in Solitaire, where we run over a piece of barbed wire and get a second flat. Luckily this new truck has two spares. The apple pie in Solitaire is really good. Spend the night at a very remote site in Namib-Nakluft Park, where we are visited by warthogs and zebras, who clearly don’t mind that we haven’t had showers.

Day 13: Drive to Walvis Bay, realize there’s nothing there. Drive on to Swakopmund, a neat little Germanicized (?) town along the coast, and camp at a lovely site where we have get to park on grass for the first time ever and have our own private bathroom. We are ecstatic until the fog and mist and chilly wind move in. Sealing the rooftop tents up tightly for warmth means I wake up at 4:00 am with chilly condensation water dripping onto my face and neck, Chinese water-torture style.

Day 14: Have a relaxing day off in Swakopmund, only to find that since it’s Sunday, half of the shops, restaurants, cafes, and pubs we wanted to visit are closed. Find out that the guy we’ve been dealing with at the truck rental company has gone on vacation for a week and left no instructions for anyone. Then find out that since it’s the weekend, the truck hasn’t even been looked at and won’t be done for at least three days, meaning delivery in Swakopmund, as originally planned, will not be happening.

We’re out of here tomorrow. Onwards and upwards!

p.s. Photos? Pfft. Are you kidding? This is Africa.

Meet the Beaks

This is Rocky.



Rocky is an originally-named Rockhopper Penguin. Rockhoppers are not native to South Africa; they are found in the sub-Antarctic Pacific and Indian Oceans. He was picked up somewhere along the coast, and the theory is that Rockhoppers are really tame, and because of that, someone on a boat, maybe a cargo ship, picked him up as a "pet", and then realized they couldn't just keep him, and left him here.

So now he's at SANCCOB. He can't go back to where he's from, because he may have acquired disease or parasites that could infect the population at his colony, and anyway, he's having a bit of trouble with his feathers -- he started moulting and they don't want to grow back. We hope he'll eventually find a home at the Two Oceans Aquarium in Cape Town, where they already have a thriving population of Rockhoppers. Until then, he keeps us entertained at SANCCOB with his hopping, beak nibbles, and constant jailbreaks.

By the way, he is the only penguin at SANCCOB that you can handle like this without getting permanent scars.

This is Fluffy.



He's been around SANCCOB for a long time. He is truly an arrested moulter -- his waterproof swimming feathers, for some reason, simply will not grow back. In the wild, he wouldn't be able to swim for any length of time, and he would probably starve. He's quite the Romeo around home pen, finding a new mate every season, apparently, while most African Penguins are strictly monogomous.

This is Penguin AP125.



You can't see it, but he has a wicked wound on his belly from where a seal tried to rip the fish out of his guts, like a bag of potato chips. It was the size of my hand when we arrived, and the skin and feathers were completely torn off, right down to the muscle. We've been applying a medicated cream to it every day, and it's healing well. Now, though, he's in moult, so there are feathers everywhere. Penguins in moult gorge themselves at the start of moult and then don't eat during the entire moulting process, as they obviously can't swim, so feedings lately have been interesting.

This is Edgar.



You can't tell from this side, but Edgar is missing one eye and his beak is crossed. He has trouble feeding because of this, so we keep him in Home Pen, where he gets his daily ration of fish and can swim in safety. Sometimes I see him in the corner, staring at the wall with his good eye. I think he's lost.

This is Penguin AP 280.



He arrived at SANCCOB with an injured foot. It kept flipping over and he was trying to walk on the top of his foot, which kept getting torn on the mats. The skin and muscle wouldn't heal, and he couldn't walk properly. A local vet did the amputation for us, and after two days in a bandage, 280 was back to his normal, aggressive self -- swimming like normal and learning to walk on his new stump, like a pirate. Captain Jack Penguin, anyone?

Plunging Back In

Catherine and Alan have arrived, and we're getting ready to leave Cape Town in a fully loaded and completely packed Toyota Hilux quad-cab 3.0 litre diesel "bakkie" (pickup truck.) There are a few problems with it, like the fact that one tire AND the spare are completely wrecked, the interior light doesn't work, and we have no GPS. It'll get sorted.

In the meantime, we're enjoying each other's company and getting ready to head into the wilds of Namibia and Botswana. Internet may be sporadic, but I will try to update Love and Chopsticks whenever I can, including photos. Otherwise I've scheduled a few posts to tide you over until we return to civilization.

Peace, people. Peace and love.

Bye-bye Birdie

It's time for another goodbye. The six weeks spent in Cape Town, and more specifically at SANCCOB with our penguin friends, have sped by.

Only six weeks ago we arrived back at our guest house after the first day of work, convinced that we were in for a long, dragging time. The birds were terrifying, and the work was exhausting. I couldn't believe how much laundry these birds produced, and the thought of pushing a meal of whole fish down the throat of a struggling bird wedged between my knees -- it was overwhelming. The first two days we counted the hours and minutes until lunch, and then we counted down to the end of the day.

Then we started to see the birds' personalities. We knew which ones were docile and sweet (relatively), and we knew which ones were positively evil. We watched them float in the pool, flipping from side to side. We herded their waddling, wiggling butts in and out of their fenced pens as we chased them, and we learned how to catch them without drawing (our) blood. At first it was a thrill -- dodging the mayhem of 30 penguin beaks reaching for your hand was an adrenaline rush unlike anything ever experienced. It was like... Fear Factor. The cuts and bruises we garnered became like war wounds, things to be displayed proudly to anyone who showed an interest.



Yesterday I sat next to my penguins and washed their feathers after a particularly messy feed. I sprayed them with the hose, lightly, and they stretched their necks high and fluttered their flippers. Their bodies plumped out as they ruffled their feathers and preened, and they wiggled their little tails as the droplets of water fell on their little torpedo bodies. I was hit with the realization that I was sitting next to a bunch of penguins. I was washing penguins, and for the past six weeks I'd been part of a team that's responsible for rehabilitating them and returning them to the wild. I realized how lucky we were to have had this experience, and how precious an experience it really was, how rare.



In our time at SANCCOB we've helped wash oiled penguins. We've helped penguins with crooked beaks, huge bite wounds, only one eye, and we've watched as penguins with missing or amputated feet have found a way to stand, walk, and run (waddle) again. We've seen skinny, weak babies leave a few weeks after admission as fat, vicious juveniles, and though they nip at our knees and bite our fingers, we cheer them on as they gain strength and vigour with every fish we give them. These penguins can't thank us, but we feel a sense of satisfaction in working here, because every bird that has left SANCCOB a healthy and strong is one more African penguin in this big, dangerous world, and that's a beautiful thing.

One Man's Lifetime

We finally had time today to pay a visit to Robben Island, once a maximum security prison, and infamously known as the place where Nelson Mandela spent much of his life. Our tour guide was an ex-inmate, imprisoned for political reasons. He described to us the living conditions at Robben Island -- a place where only black, coloured, or Asian men were incarcerated. White men and women were housed on the mainland, but these unfortunate souls were banished to Robben and forced to do manual labour; in Mandela's case, crushing rock in the nearby limestone quarry, rain or shine, winter or summer. Many men, Mandela included, have suffered permanent visual impairment from years of toiling in the glaring sunlight.

In one block, forty men were housed in a room 20 metres long. A solitary confinement cell, such as the one assigned to Mandela, was the size of a walk-in closet. Education was a privilege which could be removed abruptly at any time for any reason. Meals were atrocious, and worst of all, the meal schedule for black inmates was deliberately inferior to that of the coloured and Asian inmates -- an attempt to create a hierarchy within a group of men who had become friends.

Mandela spent 27 years in prison for political crimes known as 'sabotage'. Eighteen of these years he spent in solitary confinement at Robben Island. This man, this international hero, this nation's saviour, spent his strongest years behind bars, deprived of all of the things that make us human. Upon his release, he could have chosen to live his remaining years in peace, indulging in a retirement he well deserved. Instead, he shouldered the responsibilities of bringing a scattered, divided nation together. He is South Africa's most noble citizen and its most favoured son, because even though he was abused and wrongly imprisoned because of his race and its politics, he never turned his back on his country.

What's Happening To Me???

Today I found myself making reference to the 'rubbish bin'. Then I paused and actually had to think really, really hard about what I used to call the bin -- the garbage can.

Oh my goodness, I've gone International English. What's next, petrol and car boots and going to the cinema to watch a film after going to the shops? Am I wearing pants underneath my trousers, or did I forget my underwear which I wear under my pants? Did BG crash the rental car or the hire car? Do I have a mobile or a cell phone? Is it dinner at six thirty, or supper at half six? Did I just eat a whole bar of chocolate, or was it a slab? (Let me tell you, the slab of chocolate sounds way worse.) Did my strawberries come in a container or a punnet? Do I have to do the laundry or the washing? There's nothing on TV, or is it the telly?

This reminds me of the time I bought a can of 'tomato sauce' in Australia, and it turned out to be ketchup. First of all, who puts ketchup in a can? Second, ketchup is ketchup and tomato sauce is for pasta or pizza.

Also, it's raining. Again.

Where's the Kumbaya?

South Africa is a funny country.

In many ways, it's a lot like home. We have internet, we have malls, we have movies, we have grocery stores. People speak English and don't take live chickens on the bus. Culture shock has certainly not been a problem.

Cape Town and South Africa still have a dirty little secret, though. Race relations are still a touchy subject here. I hesitate to right-out use the label "racism", but the fact remains that apartheid only officially ended in 1994. Only in 1994 were blacks allowed to vote. Only in 1998 were blacks allowed to move anywhere they wanted in Cape Town, to live as a family if one person was considered black and the other coloured, to live in and move around the city without having to carry a pass book which identified him or her as black. Up until 1998, it was even law that coloured people were to be favoured over blacks when offering employment.

Prior to 1998, blacks and coloured people (official terms used to classify different races) were segregated and forced to live in townships specifically for them. Many of these townships are still in existence, and today we did a tour of three of them - all black, all poor, all devastatingly separate from the quiet suburb we're staying in. To call some of the shelters in these townships "residences" is a laughable offense. They're shacks. They're shanties. Some of the larger buildings, originally built as male-only dormitories, have rooms in them that house three families of five where only two people should be. Twenty people share a cold-water faucet and toilet. They buy their sheep's heads to feed their families. Apparently they are delicious when grilled with the wool still on.

People of colour continue to live in these townships because it's all they've ever known and it's all they can afford. Officially, any family or person can move anywhere, but the reality is that most affluent areas are still white.

South Africa's population is 70% black, by definition, so it makes sense statistically that the people that serve us at restaurants and at gas stations, check our groceries, and clean the streets are black. But it doesn't make sense that most of the people being served in these restaurants, gas stations, and fancy grocery stores are white. At the movies it's black people behind the counter and white people in the theater seats. At the gym it's mostly white people sweating their asses off on the stationary cycles and black people wiping the equipment off when they're done.

South Africa's come a long way, but they've still got a long way to go. Like our friends the African penguins, race relations here are still very much black and white.

That Sweet Smell

This is an African Penguin.



(photo courtesy of Wikipedia)

We're one week into this whole penguin thing and it's definitely on the upswing. In fact, I am ready to admit that I'm having a ton of fun! We are successfully handling the birds, and have settled comfortably into the routine of feed-tube-scrub-scrub-feed-tube-scrub. Scrub. I haven't gotten any more bites (if you don't count the one on my shoulder and the one on my arm, as they're both my own stupid fault.) And I've discovered a new favourite thing, which is spraying the birds down with the hose after every meal, to remove the oils from the fish they've just devoured. They love the hose, and lean forward into the spray, closing their eyes and tilting their heads back and flapping their flippers in (my imagined) ecstacy. Sometimes I do it randomly in the middle of the day for good reason at all, just because they are so darn cute.

SANCCOB is currently caring for under a hundred penguins, which is a good thing for a number of reasons. It means we're not being run ragged, and it means that the colonies of penguins on the coast and surrounding islands are healthy and that there have been no oil spills or dumps along the coast. In 2000, there was an oil spill of epic proportions off the coast of South Africa, when an oil tanker called The Treasure ran aground. During the days following this disaster, SANCCOB cleaned and cared for 16,000 oiled penguins, while another 1,100 chicks were cared for elsewhere. In total, an estimated 40,000 birds were moved from the contaminated area, oiled or not, and saved from indisputable suffering and death.

It's absolutely boggling.

It's also inspiring, and is one more reason I bounce out of bed early every morning, totally thrilled to be doing this work.

They're Cute. They Waddle. They Bite.

We are three days into our six week volunteer stint at SANCCOB in Cape Town. SANCCOB does very important work, namely rescuing and rehabilitating injured, oiled, or otherwise weakened African penguins and returning them to the wild whenever possible. In cases where the birds are permanently injured and would be unable to fend for themselves, they are introduced as permanent residents at the centre, and spend their days being hand fed sardines and swimming in the pool... it's a good life.

There is a basic triage system set up at SANCCOB; at admission, the birds are assessed and placed in different groups according to their strength and the severity of any injuries. Oiled birds are separated and get cleaned after a few days of rehydration and feeding. Very weak or sick birds get special care in the ICU; from there, they move into different groups where they get hand-fed fluids, medications, and fish. They have to rebuild their swimming endurance with forced swims of increasing duration, and once they can swim happily for an hour and are in all respects healthy and strong, they are released back into the wild.



I had visions of cuddling up to adorable, waddling penguins, offering them fish as they accepted them -- gently -- from my hands. Instead, I find myself sneaking up to the brood, arms and hands covered in protected neoprene. They snap at my fingers and arms, sometimes my knees and toes, but I'm wearing oilskins and rubber boots, so it doesn't hurt too much. Suddenly I snatch one (there is definitely a technique here) and take it over to be given fluids, or fish, or pills. It. is. terrifying. My heart pounds each time I go for a bird.

I am being terrorized by a three-kilogram penguin. I now think I know where they got that old moniker, the Jackass Penguin.

When not chasing and/or herding penguins, we are scrubbing stuff. Or washing stuff. Or disinfecting stuff. One hundred-plus penguins make a lot of poop, and it's got to go somewhere, right?